Publication Order of Jump Universe Series (with Mike Moscoe) Books

Publication Order of Vicky Peterwald Books

Mike Shepherd is an American Science Fiction author born in Philadelphia. Mike’s Navy background ensured that he spent a lot of his early years traveling.

+Biography

Born in 1947 in Philadelphia (the Navy Yard Hospital), Mike Shepherd abandoned the town of his birth at a very early age. It wasn’t until he was drafted that he finally went back.

With his family in the Navy, Mike moved around a lot, never spending more than a few weeks or months in any given location. It wasn’t until he reached High School that Mike actually started and finished a year in the same school.

College was pleasant enough for the author. Finding a job afterward wasn’t an issue either, Mike joining the army in 1968. Army life didn’t treat him well, though. Mike was admitted to the intensive care unit of the Army hospital in the area barely two days into boot camp.

Shepherd himself has admitted that his war stories are mostly a sequence of embarrassments, though the experience did little to debilitate his ability to produce amazing military science fiction books.

With the Military in his rearview mirror, Mike Shepherd tried his hand at driving, though life as a cab driver was no less complicated. Mike got lost on several occasions, which explains why he eventually turned to bartending, though he was just as unsuccessful in that field.

Life eventually threw Mike a bone when the Navy Department allowed him to work as a budget analyst. However, work was anything but exciting, especially when he found himself balancing the barracks account for paint.

Upon discovering the shadier side of the Navy’s accounting department, Mike spent the next several years bouncing around, at one point dealing with performance standards, labor contracts and instruction memos in the Navy Department.

Eventually, upon noting his passion for writing and realizing that his current job opportunities wouldn’t afford him the chance to pursue this passion, Mike Shepherd signed up for a writing class at Clark Community College.

Before long, Mike was churning out one story after another, many of his works influenced by his life experiences.

Mike Shepherd is a highly competent worker with training in Salary Administration and Bargaining, History, Theology and International relations to mention but a few. For the author, pastimes include watching his grandchildren play (mining story ideas from them in the process) and upgrading his computer.

+Literary Career

Mike Shepherd’s first published work was a short story called ‘Summer Hopes, Winter Dreams’. Mike sold the story to Analog, a science fiction magazine that published it in 1991.

He sold his first novel four years after that. Since then, Mike has endeavored to write at least one book every single year. The writing arena wasn’t particularly kind to Mike Shepherd in the beginning.

It wasn’t until he noticed the abysmal sales figures of Mike’s first three novels that his editor encouraged him to switch to Military Science Fiction set in the future.

The books Mike wrote after this were better received, though, the sales figures were still not as high as expected. At this point, Mike Shepherd’s editor suggested that he make a fresh start, writing a whole new series under a pseudonym. The decision proved successful, with Mike’s later books selling even better than predicted.

Mike finds his stories in the people that surround him. He has a lot of interest in society and how science plays into the evolution of man and the transformation of the Universe.

+First Dawn

They are the first of their kind, travelers through time, guinea pigs from a future reduced to ash by a plague. In traveling to the dawn of civilization thousands of years ago, among the primitive tribes, they will undertake an experiment that cannot fail to trace a fatal chain of events, possibly even altering history for the better.

This isn’t the first book that paints the picture of a future ravaged by death and destruction, with time machines being deployed to change history in order to save the human race.

Mike Shepherd’s approach to the concept is unique and interesting, primarily when you realize that the travelers in question are traveling, not a few centuries back, but to the very dawn of civilization with the aim of setting humanity on a different path.

The focus is placed on a single conflict between the Kurgan Horsemen and the peaceful people of the plains whose outcome drove the disasters that followed. With a team constituting a man, a woman, a pair of horses and three dogs, the mission is implemented in desperation.

It becomes the objective of this team to integrate themselves into the local tribe, learn the language and help defeat the Kurgan horsemen. While Mike ignores a lot of historical elements and factors in constructing this story, the narration is none the less intriguing and highly entertaining.

Admittedly, there are a lot of things that require a suspension of disbelief.

+Second Fire

Captain Jack and Lt. Launa O’Brian must save the people of the Badger from extinction by leading them down a path of war. In succeeding, they hope to erase the centuries and millennia of brutality that await humanity in the future.

The first book in the Lost Millennium series (First Dawn) suggested that the Jack and Launa had succeeded in changing the future. The second novel, however, posits a wholly different outcome.

It falls upon the shoulders of this team of time travelers to save the world once more. They must train the people of the Badger to fight their brutal enemy. Difficulties arise as a result of the tribe’s peaceful nature (which they are determined to preserve)

Mike Shepherd spends a lot of time describing day to day life in ‘Old Europe’, which some people might find insufferable. The book is also quite brutal, at least when compared to the first one, Mike not shying away from all the sex and violence.

You cannot help but enjoy it, though. Yes, a lot of it actually doesn’t make sense, and there are time traveling discrepancies, but nothing that cannot be ignored by anyone determined enough to enjoy the book.

With the latest book in the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney coming out soon, we wanted to make the very first book in the series our book of the month.

Greaney is an incredible author and if you love the "lone badass" type of books then you will LOVE the Court "Gray Man" Gentry series. Read more about it.

Featured Series

It might seem like overkill, but we're giving The Gray Man series our featured series of the month.

Honestly this is such a great series and we feel not enough people read it so we want to push it. Read more about The Gray Man series and seriously if you haven't read it - start! Amazing thrillers.

Featured Author

Mark Greaney is an incredibly talented author. Not only does he write the Gray Man series however he also writes various Jack Ryan novels. Many feel he is the best writer of them and he truly is a great author. We're happy to award our author of the month to Mark Greaney.

Did You Know…

Before becoming an author, Brian Freeman was a director of marketing and public relations at the international law firm of Faegre & Benson.